I am a resident of DHA Lahore and an eye witness to the extreme corruption being practiced in LESCO office DHA, particularly. The organization has literally been overbilling every resident as majority of residents don’t know how to take meter reading to counter check their bills. There are nearly 50 thousand or above residents in DHA comprising the upper class who don’t bother to check their bills, the ones belonging to lower middle class either don’t know how to check their electricity bills or they give up after a couple of visits.
I have two electricity meters at my residence. In the month of December I took my meter readings, one meter’s display was dead, of the upper portion which we hardly use. I received two bills, the meter reader had noted an obnoxious number of units for the dead display meter and the lower portion units were also wrongly notified.
The concerned person for correcting bills asked me to show him video of the active meter, I did so and he corrected the bill, after more than three trips to the office and a lot of hassle. I discussed with him the reason for being billed exuberant thousand units amounting Rs. 20,000/- for the meter whose display was dead, as on what basis was I charged 1000 units whereas there was no display.
That department is a group of evil genius people and they have a very technical and professional way of justifying wrong billing. He took out a big scroll and started his prompt briefing explaining me that the meter reader came and checked the load of the main electric wire at that time and it was around 16 amperes. I am educated enough to know that he was talking illogical. I argued with him explaining him that an ampere load can never predict how many hours that load was being utilized during the entire month.
He told me to pay the bill in any case and assured me that he would get the meter checked in the laboratory and if the chip inside the meter stated more units consumed, they would credit it in future bills.
Getting the dead meter replaced was entirely a different story; I had to pay more than ten visits with no success. I was even once told that they have no new meters in stock, whereas I myself saw hundreds or maybe thousands of brand new meters in another room. Eventually I had to bring in some strong references to get the new meter replaced. The same staff started cooperating with me after reference, who were refusing before.
The system is very organized, but the core issue is the execution and. There is serious problem with the intentions of the senior and junior staff. I wanted to personally bring the matter in notice of the Superintendent Engineer SE but the SE’s PA staff denied me meeting him, citing an example of a police station saying that sir if you ever go to a police station you don’t go directly to the SP or DSP you go to the ASI. My dead meter which was supposed to be checked in the laboratory has gone missing, and they again sent a wrong electricity bill and as of today it’s a daily routine paying two or three visits to the LESCO office where the entire staff is corrupt and due to their union they don’t even care about their seniors. I request the WAPDA Union, if not the government officials to take notice of this malpractice. If they really don’t want this institution to get privatized then they shouldn’t be performing like this.
Farooq Azhar Khwaja
LAHORE